Life When You're Dead
by succedissidor
Summary: What IS on the other side, really? Is it true what they say about curtains that close when you're going away? Rating is for bad words. Ch.1- Sirius Black Ch.2- Death Eater Ch.3- Louis Pringle
1. Curtains That Close

A/N: Hi. I'm still alive, if anyone who was reading my Percy fic was wondering. Standard disclaimers apply- not mine, and if they were Harry would've kicked it facing Quirrel. Or would never have made it to Hogwarts in the first place. Just kidding, Harry fans.

Is it true what they say about life when you're dead?

Cause I'm going away.

Is it true what they say about curtains that close when you're going away?

Beta Band

****

life when you're dead…

There was an extended period in which there was nothing at all.

There was something that was vitally important, and he…

There was…

There was some kind of light. There was no waking, no slow coming-to. There was himself, as far as he could tell, standing in… what…

"What the hell is this place?" He looked around, or tried to. As far as he could see, there was nothing of any apparent character at all. Turning around and around to look produced no result. He was standing. At least empty blackness, or whiteness, hell, he could take that… But he was clearly standing on something, and there was… It he concentrated too hard it fought him, becoming flatter and flatter until he could almost believe he'd somehow tumbled into a painting. But that was certainly imposs- the silence was crushing, he was panicking, he ran… He couldn't run, because the place refused to move around him… He screamed…

"Never do you any good." The voice sent a shock through him with such electric force that he would have fallen, if the damned place would cooperate. Instinctively he turned, and though the world stayed the same a gaunt figure slid into his view. He stared.

The man was old, and young, and nothing at all. He was perhaps forty, but the weight of some unseen force gave him the haunted look of the immortals- doomed to a life of endless repetition… He shifted…

Sirius finally found a voice, presumably his, and launched his questions at the figure. "Where the hell am I? What is this place? Why can't I move? Who the fuck are you, why are you so damn… whatever you are! What…" He stopped. The man looked at him levelly, his eyes blank. Sirius knew that expression- he'd seen it too many times in Azkaban, too many times lurking ominously at the edge of his own reflection. The man was hopelessly internalized, mad beyond all reach. But he'd spoken to him first… "Why?"

"Never do you any good. It will never do you any good. It will Never." The man lowered his eyes, and slid away into the distance. It took Sirius a moment to realize that it was because he was running away.

Or not.

It was a dayweekdecade or something like… there were others here… he knew where he was, in theory. He was behind a curtain. The shit part of that was that it did not appear to have another side. He was trapped here, and Harry was out there with Voldemort… a name which lost its terror here… he'd been gone for a centuryminutenanosecond and he had to get back… had to escape… he'd escaped worse, maybe worse, a thousand times better because there he could see how to escape… He screamed. He never stopped screaming.

The girl could not have been any more than twenty, by the look of her, despite the float of shifting overlay that affected everyone whom he'd found in this strange place. She sounded young, certainly, although Sirius felt that he was losing his capacity to judge anything anymore. It was almost as bad as Azkaban… it was worse than… it was prison… it was insanity…and yet she'd spoken to him, which none of the others he'd encountered would deign to do… she'd looked at him with a sort of hope, with fear, with curiosity. He was still screaming at terror, unbearable confinement, injustice.

Sirius could not describe her, even to himself. She was colourless- in greyscale, transparent, a void of blackness… you can only see the planets, sometimes, when you look slightly to the left… but she was speaking and he stopped screaming, even in his head, tried to listen…

"What did you do to end up here?"

Hoarsely. "I fell through the curtain. Am I dead?"

She laughed, or gave the impression that she would have laughed, or didn't laugh at all. "No. You're not-dead. We do not die here. We cannot- at least, those who have tried cannot. Or perhaps they have. Some just disappear. Maybe they don't stop walking. But you did not answer me. Why are you here?"

"What.. where is here? I don't know…"

"Prison. It was an accident, then?"

"Prison? I've been in prison… it is not like… it is not this."

"Azkaban, yes? There is room there? There was a time when there was not. The Dark Lord fell. The prisons were overrun with Death Eaters, Supporters, Innocents. So they made this."

"And this is?"

"Prison."

"But what… why? It doesn't make sense… the Department of Mysteries is experimenting…" The more he spoke, the more lucid his thoughts became. It occurred to him to wonder why the girl apparently had no trouble functioning in this strange place, when all others he'd met looked through him, as if he was part of the unchanging landscape. "Are you in charge?"

"No. I am a prisoner." She looked vaguely distracted for a moment, then refocused on him. "Why are you here? Are you going to release us?"

"I fell. Through a curtain. Fighting your 'Dark Lord,' who apparently didn't fall half hard enough. I don't know anything more than that." For a moment panic surfaced in the girl's face, and she looked at him with wild eyes…

"He is not destroyed? Oh, God… How much time has passed? Has it been so short a time?"

Sirius blinked at her, processing. She'd said she was put here because Azkaban was filled with Death Eaters. So- just after his own imprisonment. He'd had to watch countless guilty witches and wizards released on technicalities and bribes in the few months following… "About fourteen years, I'd guess." There was a war of emotions- apparent relief that time in the prison did not move so slowly after all, clear distress at being imprisoned for so long, and fear- of what? Voldemort? More time in this barren, horrible place? Fear of what she would find, could she escape?

Finally she cast her eyes downward and laughed… a shaking giggle… laughed. "Fourteen years. And he is not destroyed. And I am still here. It was for nothing, then." She looked up at him, and grinned brokenly, deranged. She gestured to the underside of her left arm, which pulled into sharp focus. A Dark Mark. "And you fell. Tragic."

"Surely someone will realize the mistake, and come get me."

"Oh, yes. They tried that. There are at least three of them here- Ministry men who came to retrieve us. One of them will talk to you, if you like. If it will reassure you."

"He can get me out?"

"No. he can tell you that nothing you do will be of any use. It will never do you any good."

"Oh. We've met." Her meaning sunk in slowly. He was trapped here, not dead, not alive, trapped more surely than he'd ever been trapped in Azkaban. No one had ever escaped... but here, the Ministry… life when you're dead. Purgatory? Limbo?

"Most people go insane, at first, and then their minds just sort of shut off. Some of us cannot do that. We just have to wait." She turned, was farther from him than she had been.

Sirius discovered that he would be crying in his distress. "I've spent so much time waiting… I can't do this… I… help me, damnit! Why? What is the purpose of this? What's your story? Talk to me, for fuck's sake!"

The girl turned and looked at him with her cold, infinitely sad grey eyes.

"You can go back to screaming now, if you would like."


	2. The Afterlife

A/N- It's not really feasible to go forward with this story, as I want to leave Sirius where JK left him. I was just clarifying where, exactly, that was. But I can go back, into the history of the thing. And so I am. This is the girl. You all know what JK owns, and by inference what I do not.

You missed

You missed

You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste the afterlife?

Modest Mouse

**The Afterlife**

The sequence of events leading to this moment, here, now, was a blur.

How terribly cliched.

Ari blinked rapidly, confusedly, at the sea of eager, curious, regretful, vengeful, sorry, gleeful faces… hands tightened around her arms, hands on her shoulders, hands on her back, a hand on her wrist…

A haze of terror gripped her…

Pushing up the sleeve…

Exposing the mark…

"Today," started one of the gleeful faces, "Today we mark a momentous event! No longer must we worry about the safety of our homes and children! No longer must we fear the dark threat of these… these…" He searched for an appropriately derogatory word… "lascivious, nefarious, malefactorious transgressors!" He looked pleased at himself for that, big words that meant so little…

Death Eater…

That was all the onlookers really needed to hear.

The voices rose, cheers, pleading, wails of the condemned. Her own voice, crying quietly for justice, mercy, pity…

There were twelve, today, the first day. Ari was first in line, pinned between two huge Aurors, her left arm prised upwards, the twisted sign on her arm clearly visible to the assembly…

"No more fear! We introduce the final solution to the dark problem! Azkaban need hold no more! Allow us to introduce, formally, The Infinite Prison! The safest, most inescapable prison ever created!" As the man finished speaking he swept aside a curtain to reveal…

nothing. There was nothing behind the curtain. Ari found herself giggling, unable to stop. This had to be a joke, a mistake, surely they would realize? Surely…?

The other eleven prisoners were frighteningly large men, clearly employed by Voldemort for their physical strength and not their intellect. They were to go into the prison for fear that their bodily strength would allow their escape from Azkaban. Ari was to be put in as an example…

She was forced forward, to the side, into better view of the onlookers as the others were lined up. All had long since given up fighting, marked across with scars of curses, hexes, an unmistakable residue of profuse Cruciati. The men were scarred, ugly, evil-looking, and therefore clearly all guilty.

Ari was, or rather, had been, rather beautiful. She was tall, young, fair. She was also filthy, starving, and had a definite glint of madness- the Cruciatus did not leave many physical scars, but it definitely left an impression on the mind. Any redeeming quality of her appearance was entirely compromised by the ugly black mark on her arm. And thus, she became an example. No mercy, for youth, for beauty, for her fair sex, for truth. The only judgement was a skull and a snake.

One by one, the others were forced through the doorway. One by one they vanished from view, to the startled, awed, amazed, excited gasps from spectators. And then she was left alone, and her resolve to strength crumbled and she cried, and begged, and feared.

One voice broke the crowd- "Will they ever be released?" The gleeful little fat man grimaced.

"If they reform. Once the appropriate time has elapsed. Ministry regulations require that they be released. IF they reform." He turned to Ari, still grinning like a corpse. "Do you hear? How long will that be, little girl? I supposed you're reformed now, yes?" He laughed softly, low. She couldn't find a voice, to cry no, yes, there is nothing to reform, there is nothing to confess, there is nothing…

The time for appeals had passed long ago…

There were cries, screams, cheers, insults, words of support, endless white noise as she was escorted to the doorway… paused… stepped through with what dignity was left after these long months...

And fell, stopped, ceased, plummeted, exploded, fell…

Into a place of nothing…

Nowhere…

Here.

A/N: So okay. Anyone want to know more?


	3. Rope

A/N: Here we go again. I don't own it, lah dee dah.

Nobody likes you

Everyone left you

They're all out without you

Having fun

Green Day

****

Rope

Louis Pringle really hated his job, sometimes. Hated its endless paperwork, endless owls, endless people through his door, day and night. He practically lived in this ten by twelve foot windowless, fucking _oppressive_ prison.

Prison- the thought of the word frightened him. he'd received an owl some days ago, informing him that he'd been deemed "eligible" for a retrieval mission into the Ministries most feared and rumoured prisons. Louis picked up the rolled parchment, spread it flat, and re-read it for perhaps the hundredth time. "After reviewing your records, the Ministry is pleased to inform you that you have been selected for a top-secret reconnaissance mission…" A high, hysterical giggle escaped. Of course. He had no family, few friends- no one would notice if He-Who-Is-Not-Spoken himself walked into this office and Avada Kedavra'd him into next week. No one would find his body until it started to smell. So, of course he was perfect for this mission.

Two years ago, Dale Brickwell had stepped through the black curtain. A Ministry journalism team was present to chronicle the event. Prisoners who'd been deposited almost four years earlier were to be retrieved, moved to Azkaban, once and for all proving the Ministry's absolute authority as a perfect prison system. Dale had smiled for the cameras, waved, and stepped into nothing.

The journalism team waited for seventeen hours. And then they were obliviated, and sent home. In a small lockbox in the Department of Mysteries, Dale smiled and waved, blankly, eternally, from a lone photo.

The curtain was put on constant surveillance. It was generally assumed, by those who could remember, that Brickwell had been overwhelmed by the prisoners. They were all the largest and most dangerous men the Aurors had brought in after the Dark Lord's fall. Well, those, and one young girl who'd fallen in with them, somehow.

Alon MacFrig was sent in armed to the teeth.

Zacharia Beet was sent in with a portkey.

Lalli Stone was sent in with an Appareciento.

Daniel Fairchern was sent in with a Locatorie.

Louis Pringle was to be sent in with a rope around his waist and a pat on the back.

The people sent in had been of less and less importance to the M inistry, and the world in general, until they'd come to him. he was certain he was the bottom of the barrel, their last hope. No one could possibly be less important then he.

Well. Louis wasn't the type to object. It would never do any good.

There was a sensation of absolute blackness as he stepped through. Then there was pretty much nothing. He looked around nervously, licked his lips. He tugged on the rope around his waist. And pulled. And pulled. The rope piled up a his feet.

The Ministry guards looked dubiously at one another. it had been two hours, and it was beginning to look as if this, too, had been an exercise in futility. They pulled at the rope. As the coil at their feet grew to impossible size, they began to see the ridiculous impossibility of the situation. A joke was made about using the curtain as an unending source of rope.

And then the curtain was quietly relocated onto a pedestal in the Department of Mysteries, and forgotten by all but the Unspeakables for eight years.

Harry glanced briefly at the curtain….

Sirius grabbed vainly at the air as he fell…

No…


End file.
